How Industries Spend On Interactive Marketing

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

I dedicate this blog post to anyone who has read Forrester's interactive marketing forecast and thought, "well that's great, but how are interactive marketers in *my* industry spending on interactive tools." I've just published the US Interactive Marketing Forecast By Industry, 2009 to 2014 which splices our interactive marketing forecast by 12 different industries including:

Retail and wholesale trade
Financial services
Lead generation
B2B
Travel
High-tech
Automotive
Heath and pharmaceuticals
Consumer goods
Media and entertainment
Telecom
And an "other" category which includes primarily education, government and non-profit businesses

A few takeaways from the research:

Direct marketers spend the most, but brand advertisers have the most growth potential.  Look for the steepest growth to come from traditional advertisers who are under invested in interactive marketing today.

Advertisers should benchmark against their own peer set.  Industry benchmarks are helpful (the report includes some per-company budget estimates for different industries).  But don't presume your interactive budget should always match industry averages. We recommend adjusting your spend according to how online you business model and your customers are.

Stay tuned for deeper dives into retail, financial services, consumer goods and travel interactive spend in subsequent pieces of research.

I dedicate this blog post to anyone who has read Forrester's interactive marketing forecast and thought, "well that's great, but how are interactive marketers in *my* industry spending on interactive tools." I've just published the US Interactive Marketing Forecast By Industry, 2009 to 2014 which splices our interactive marketing forecast by 12 different industries including:

Retail and wholesale trade
Financial services
Lead generation
B2B
Travel
High-tech
Automotive
Heath and pharmaceuticals
Consumer goods
Media and entertainment
Telecom
And an "other" category which includes primarily education, government and non-profit businesses

A few takeaways from the research:

Direct marketers spend the most, but brand advertisers have the most growth potential.  Look for the steepest growth to come from traditional advertisers who are under invested in interactive marketing today.

Advertisers should benchmark against their own peer set.  Industry benchmarks are helpful (the report includes some per-company budget estimates for different industries).  But don't presume your interactive budget should always match industry averages. We recommend adjusting your spend according to how online you business model and your customers are.

Stay tuned for deeper dives into retail, financial services, consumer goods and travel interactive spend in subsequent pieces of research.

Yahoo! Has The Right Mobile Priorities

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

I spoke with Yahoo! in response to my WIM bullet about them in my recent US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014.  They wanted to correct how I had represented their mobile strategy.  I spoke with Adam Taggart, Head of Global Product Marketing for Yahoo! Mobile and Zealous Wiley who heads up communications for

Mobile.  They stressed that Yahoo! has three primary goals this year for mobile:

1) To continue to develop more mobile applications to allow for greater use and utility of Yahoo! via mobile devices.

2) To extend relationships with current Yahoo.com users into the mobile realm.

3) To improve synergies between the Yahoo.com and the Yahoo mobile experience, so that the two environments reflect the same experience

I would agree with Yahoo, that this sounds like a solid approach to mobile, particularly because today the mobile Yahoo environment does not fully harmonize with the one on Yahoo.com.  In fact I think that Yahoo's greatest challenge is creating a unified experience of Yahoo! for consumers (and advertisers) across its myriad properties and applications.  For example, not all of the applications integrated into Yahoo! Mail as part of Yahoo's Open Strategy are available through other Yahoo properties like My Yahoo! and Y! Toolbar. 

So, I've amended my comments about Yahoo! to reflect that it is not specifically a challenge with its mobile strategy that makes it a potential fit with Apple.  Rather the current struggle to better unify the customer experiences across all of Yahoo!, coupled with declining online ad sales will leave Yahoo! seeking a suitor.

Confirmed: The Recession Limits Interactive Experimentation

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

Forrester's "Interactive Marketing Channels To Watch, 2009" -- our annual look at actual interactive channel adoption compared to hype -- went live on Friday.  A few of the study's key takeaways:

*Few marketers experiment with emerging media with the exception of social media applications.  They stick with email and search and are waiting for a better economy to embrace online video and mobile marketing.

      

*Marketers embrace social media applications. 64% of our sample are already building social media applications, despite a general hesitancy to experiement with emerging media

*Display media penetration has declined due to marketers prioritizing direct response investments over branding ones this year

How does this adoption of interactive tools match with your own?

Interactive Budgets Are Growing At The Expense Of Offline

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

During my presentation at Forrester's Marketing Forum on April 23,  I previewed Forrester's latest forecast of interactive marketing spend.  We expect marketer spend on display media, search, email, mobile and social media to reach nearly $55 billion by 2014.

  

This growth is due to marketers seeking lower cost, more accountable channels which are also widely used by their customers.  This year, we are also finding that marketers are migrating dollars away from traditional channels and into interactive ones.

  

Direct mail and print are suffering the most loss to interactive tools.  According to our survey, 40% expect to cut direct mail budgets, while 35% will decrease newspaper spend and 28% will slash magazine money in order to spend more in interactive media.

 

I'm actually currently at work on Forrester's full forecast report detailing the growth trends around each of the channels itemized in this forecast.  Look for that report -- which will include additional data and explanation -- on our site around the first part of June.

Online Media Insights from Sportgenic

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

I had breakfast last Friday with Robert Tas, CEO of Sportgenic an ad network and advertising management platform focused on targeting advertising to sports enthusiasts.  He was in Boston meeting some agency partners (although he did manage to catch game 7 of the Celtics/Bulls series while in town!)

He shared a few observations based on ad sales at his business so far this year:

*Like most publishers, he is finding that advertisers are shifting dollars away from branding and toward direct response vehicles because of the recession.  He and I both agreed that this is a very short-sighted strategy.  Not only does it set your firm up for a poor recovery after the recession ends, but it also means you are likely paying more per conversion than if you invested in some upstream activity focused on warming up an audience to convert easier when they reach the direct response of point of sale touchpoint.

*He's seeing limited experiments with mobile.  Despite the advances in mobile devides and the promise the mobile medium holds for marketers (and of course to the chagrin of my Forrester colleagues here dedicated to mobile marketing), I maintain my cynicism about mobile as well.  With limited marketing budgets available today.  I would definitely invest in trusted channels first and wiat for mobile to work out some more of its kinks. 

*Recent new investment is coming from auto and financial services companies.  After being dark for several months, these industries are back buying online doing reach campaigns (cheaper than TV) and targeting specific users in market for new cars or investments.

*The recession is breeding bad habits.  I have a theory that because business is slower during the recssion, vendors and marketers actually have time to think and develop, which will lead to a burst of innovation after purse strings open back up at the end of the downturn.  Tas, decidedly disagreed with me.  He is finding that marketers are so focused on getting results that they are going after any and all low hanging fruit.  This means they aren't necessarily doing the right thing, but rather doing the thing that gets them to their needed result.  And of course, it will be hard to break bad habits that have been practiced throughout an 18-24 month recession.

As you can see from Jeremiah's post below, our 2009 Marketing Forum is up and running in Orlando, Florida,  with Shar VonBoskirk kicking off proceedings with (after lifting the audience with a resounding rendition of “M I C K E Y M O U S E!” – well, they are at the Disney Resort!) a keynote addressing how marketers affected by the recession, across the globe, need to treat their online planning and strategy teams as core parts of their business planning, taking account of the advantages of more accountable marketing channels. She urged marketers not to be stifled by the idea that a recession is a bad time to innovate; on the contrary, as interactive marketing channels continue to grow strongly, now is a great time to take innovative steps to reach consumers across online channels, with far less risk than many marketers perceive.

More experts from the likes of Microsoft, Starbucks and iProspect take the stage on Friday to share their insights into how to get the best value out of interactive marketing in a recession.

The Forum is being held in the US, but the recession is an equal reality in Europe, and European marketers are faced with the same challenges – how to get the best out of their marketing spend, how to take advantage of the flexibility and measurability of interactive channels, and how to best reach and talk to consumers also feeling the bite of the downturn. Marketers struggle with understanding how they can identify key consumers in their European target countries, what technologies to use to reach them, and how to innovate, say using social media, to make a brand stand out from the crowd?

We at Forrester talk to hundreds of European clients a year about these, and other, marketing problems. For example. we have recently worked with a major European online brand about repositioning the brand in the light of consumer’s changing online behaviours, looking at both consumer behaviour data from our own Consumer Technographics surveys as well as strategic insight into how consumers use online content, and how they research/buy products online.

If you are a marketer looking for help with such issues, please do reach out to me here at rjennings@forrester.co.uk. We have analysts in Europe, the US and Asia, ready to help.

 

Client Choice Research For Interactive Marketers

[Posted by Christine Overby]

2008 was tumultuous year for Interactive Marketing professionals. You had to promote digital efforts internally, make the case for emerging channels, and re-evaluate your plans as the economy soured -- all while continuing to deliver exciting interactive campaigns to your customers. You've told us that the hurdles will still be there in 2009. At Forrester, we're committed to helping you address them. Tell us your biggest challenge, and we'll write research to help you overcome it.

• Demonstrating ROI
• Integrating Channels
• Handling budget scrutiny

Click on the "vote now"button below and see what your peers say is the top hurdle they face, while helping us pick the topic so that we write the research that matters most to you!

Voting is now closed . . . Thanks to everyone who provided feedback. The winning topic by a huge margin is Demonstrating ROI. Look for research on the topic in March!

Yahoo!'s New CEO Should Prioritize Her Operational Savvy

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

Yahoo! announced today that Carol Bartz would become its new CEO effective immediately.  Read the press release here.  For some of the history leading up to this announcement read my past posts and those of my colleague David Card.

I'm not directly familiar with Carol's professional expertise, so I can't weigh in on if she is the right fit for Yahoo!.  But, from what Yahoo! is saying, it picked her for all the right reasons.  Right now, they need a CEO who can:

• Provide operational experience.  Over the last few years, Yahoo! has cobbled together an impressive assortment of advertising technologies and social media properties (Flickr, The Right Media Exchange, Blue Lithium), and has developed smart proprietary technologies as well (BOSS, APT, Open Social).  But so far, Yahoo! has struggled to pull all of its properties into a solution that is more useful to consumers, and more valuable to advertisers than its competitors'. 
  
  I think Yahoo's new CEO's number one priority should be creating synergies across all of these currently-diverse capabilities in order to create internal efficiencies, more compelling offerings to advertisers, and an integrated ad sales process.
• Focus on advertising and social media.  I still believe that Yahoo! is wrong to keep chasing Google in the search marketing business.  Google already has that race won and there is plenty of business for second place Yahoo!.  I'd like to see Yahoo!'s new CEO focus on display media and social media -- two places where Yahoo! still leads Google (and there is ample marketer opportunity).
• Be open and discerning about strategic options.  I don't think Yahoo! put Bartz in place just to figure out how to best sell it or its parts.  But I also don't think Bartz will/should dismiss a sale as a possible smart move for Yahoo!.  I see Bartz's goal as create and actualize a clear and urgent vision for Yahoo! and I would expect/hope her to be open to a number of ways to do this, which could include selling.

Interactive Marketing: An Imperative In A Recession

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

***Updated with new registration information***

With an economic crisis looming, marketers must find new means to cut costs and deliver returns.  Many interactive marketing tools can actually provide cost-effective ways for firms to increase sales and deepen customer relationships. 

I hope you will join me for a  complimentary Webinar where we discuss how interactive marketing can help you battle budget cuts or slagging sales due to the slowing economy.  In this Webinar, I'm planning to define how interactive marketing should be a mandate for all marketers to stay relevant to their end consumers.  I'm also going to tackle why interactive marketing matters, how your firm should approach it and how Forrester can help you craft meaningful interactive marketing strategies.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, October 24^th 2008
Time:  11:00am-12:00pm Eastern Time

Follow this link to register or for more information:  Register here to attend this Webinar

Hope to see you on the Webinar!

BIMA Event Yields Some Exceptional IM Examples

I'm just back from the Fourth Annual Cross Media Forum put on by BIMA, the Boston Interactive Media Association, a MITX organization.  I thought the depth of content from the event was exceptional.  It included:

• A keynote by Nick Johnson, the VP of Digital Multimedia Sales for NBC Universal.  Nick spoke about NBC's success with the Beijing Olympics.
• A panel featuring four case studies:
  1) Reebok -- Creating a Movement In Running,
  Keith Lusby, VP Global Client DIrector, Carat
  Eugene Buono, Creative Director, Carat
  Dan Wiseman, Reebok Performance Marketing, Reebok
  2) National Grid 2008 "Power of Action" Campaign
  Drayton Martin, SVP Group Account Director, Mullen
  Gina Romani Preziosa, VP, Associate Director Digital Media, Mullen
  Edward Watz, Manager, Internal Communication, National Grid
  3) Liberty Mutual, The Responsibility Project
  Seb Maitra, SVP Group Media Director, Hill Holiday
  Neal Hughlett, VP Creative Director, Hill Holiday
  4) Re-launch of Tufts Mediacal Center
  Brooke Tyson Hynes, VP, Public Affairs and communications, Tufts Medical Center
  Cindy McKnight, Director, Contact planning, PARTNERS+simons.

I came out of the event feeling quite proud of the work going on from local agencies.  These cases had some great examples of integrated marketing and most leveraged social media tools to really foster community as the primary part of the campaign.  I'm going to write up the specifics of each of the cases in subsequent blog posts just to dedicate some deserving attention to each one.